PR Diet in a nutshell

'PR Diet' is what I call my new nutritional lifestyle. It's mostly based on Douglas Graham's 80/10/10 diet.
It has been proven to work well for athletes. For example, Michael 'The Fruitarian' Arnstein set his marathon PR 2:28 in Boston 2010 after following this type of diet for a couple of years.   

The main principles to keep in mind are:

• Go all the way down on the food chain to unprocessed fruit, vegetables and nuts.
• Eliminate the intake of processed food, including superfoods, supplements and stimulants.

My immediate personal experiences and results with the diet after only a few weeks:

• I lost 7 kg (over 15 lb) without really trying in a few weeks as my weight dropped from about 69 kg (152 lb) to around 62 kg (136 lb) - this is still subject to change of course,
• my BMI dropped from 21.3 to 19.1 (also subject to change in the future), 
• my energy levels increased radically,
• my health, fitness and overall well-being felt better than ever,
• I recently ran my best half marathon in 18 years.

The four pillars of my current version of the PR Diet are:

1. Sweet fruits and honey.
2. Vegetables and less-sweet fruits.
3. Nuts and seeds.
4. Water and herb/fruit teas (caffeine-free).

In the beginning I felt like I was not eating too much fat, but www.nutridiary.com revealed the truth: I was still getting a third of my calories from fat! It's very easy to fool yourself, so taking time to log all your food for a while is well worth the effort. 

Top 10 foods to avoid:

1. the usual non-vegan foods (meat, poultry, seafood, dairy, eggs etc)
2. non-raw foods (cooked, fried, heated, denaturized, pasteurized etc)
3. grains (wheat, oat, barley, rye etc),
4. legumes (beans, peas, peanuts etc),
5. starchy foods (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes etc),
6. stimulants (no caffeine, nicotine, cacao, yerba mate etc),
7. all processed foods and beverages from supermarkets or restaurants (with sugar, salt, sweeteners, spices, additives, chemicals, toxins, colorants, alcohol, etc)
8. oils (meaning isolated fats like avocado oil, oils that come with whole foods like an avocado are naturally ok),
9. so called 'superfoods' (dehydrated and often powdered foods from exotic foods),
10. health or sports supplements and drugs (pills, capsules, powders, sports drinks/gels etc.

With all these restrictions, where do my 3-4 Kcal come from? The answer is that you need to eat as much sweet ripe fruits as you can for your main source of energy, with a healthy amount of vegetables, and only a small handful of nuts. 

The Nutridiary chart below shows exactly what I recently ate during a normal day.

This day totalled 2944 calories distributed as:

• 85% carbs
• 9% fat
• 6% protein.

I felt very good all day without any issues at all.

I didn't eat anything else except the foods listed. I made sure to get as much sunshine as possible for natural vitamin D. (When it's not possible to enjoy sunshine for a long time I might have to take a vitamin D supplement, because I live far up north.)

I drank only a few glasses of water because the weather was cool. During hot weather I'd probably drink more water.

That pretty much wraps it up. I'm going to stick with this as long as my results improve. See you in races!